1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to videoconferencing and more specifically to telepresence systems.
2. Background Art
In the past, video camera and audio systems were developed for improving communication among individuals who are separated by distance and/or time. The system and the process are now referred to as “videoconferencing”. Videoconferencing sought to duplicate, to the maximum extent possible, the full range, level and intensity of interpersonal communication and information sharing which would occur if all the participants were “face-to-face” in the same room at the same time.
Behavioral scientists know that interpersonal communication involves a large number of subtle and complex visual cues, referred to by names like “eye contact” and “body language,” which provide additional information over and above the spoken words and explicit gestures. These cues are, for the most part, processed subconsciously by the participants, and often communicate information, which cannot be communicated in any other fashion.
In addition to spoken words, demonstrative gestures, and behavioral cues, face-to-face contact often involves sitting down, standing up, and moving around to look at objects or charts. This combination of spoken words, gestures, visual cues, and physical movement significantly enhances the effectiveness of communication in a variety of contexts, such as “brainstorming” sessions among professionals in a particular field, consultations between one or more experts and one or more clients, sensitive business or political negotiations, etc. In situations where the participants cannot be in the same place at the same time, the beneficial effects of face-to-face contact will be realized only to the extent that each of the remotely located participants can be “recreated” at each site.
Although videoconferencing has come into widespread use, it is still of limited use because of the inability to very closely approximate for a user the recreation of the remotely located participants. The systems generally use fixed-location cameras and conference-type telephones. There is no sense of the presence of the user being at the site of a remote meeting or of the presence of the remotely located participants being with the user.
To overcome these problems, a system called “robotic telepresence” has been developed. In robotic telepresence, a remotely controlled robot simulates the presence of the user for the remotely located participants. The user has a freedom of motion and control over the robot and video input that is not present in traditional videoconferencing, and this better simulates the feeling of the user being present in person at a remote site. The overall experience for the user and the people interacting with the robotic telepresence device is very much superior to videoconferencing.
The robot platform typically includes a camera, a display device, a motorized platform that includes batteries, a control computer, and a wireless computer network connection. An image of the user is captured by a camera at the user's location and displayed on the display of the robotic telepresence device in the remote site.
More recently, a robotic telepresence system has been developed, which has a user station at a first geographic location and a robot at a second geographic location. The user station is responsive to a user and communicates information to and from the user. The robot is coupled to the user station and provides a three dimensional representation of the user transmitted from the user station. The robot also senses predetermined types of information and communicates the sensed information back to the user to provide a representation for the user of the robot's surroundings.
Additionally, a system has been developed for head tracking and color video acquisition via near-infrared luminance keying where the head of a user is tracked in real time. A near-infrared camera is equipped with filters that discern the difference between a near-infrared light illuminated rear projection screen behind the user and any foreground illumination to acquire a near-infrared image of the user. A color image of the user's head and the projection of a remote location are acquired by a color camera placed in close proximity to the near-infrared camera. A bounding box is placed around the near-infrared image of the user's head and translated to the view space of the color camera. The translated image is used to crop the color image of the user's head for transmission to the remote location.
However, there are many problems that still need to be addressed to provide improved robotic telepresence realism; i.e., to make the user appear to be present in person.
Solutions to problems of this sort have been long sought, but have long eluded those skilled in the art.